Froma Harrop / Syndicated columnist
The I's have it in New Hampshire

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive

MERIDEN, N.H. — Sara Townsend was the Republican majority whip in the New Hampshire Legislature for 17 years, so you'd think she would have little to do on primary day — other than watch the Democrats duke it out. On the contrary, she is very much involved. Townsend is a Republican no more. She left the party in disgust a few years ago and now calls herself an independent.

New Hampshire lets independents vote in the party primaries, and Townsend, 84, plans to choose among the Democratic contenders. She expects to vote for Gen. Wesley Clark on Tuesday, and, come November, whoever is running against President Bush. Her husband, Ira, who voted Republican for over half a century, is doing likewise.

"I just don't understand," he said, shaking his head. "Practically every move Bush makes antagonizes me."

The Republican Party's much-heralded march to power in the South has drowned out other parades in the opposite direction. Formerly bedrock Republican areas, including rich suburbs from Philadelphia to Seattle, are going more often for Democrats. Nowhere is the change starker than in northern New England, where people used to be stamped "Republican" at birth.

To many of them, the party now speaks in Southern-conservative tongues they can barely recognize. Gone are the old Republican values of balanced budgets and small government. Gone is respect for the ultimate conservative goal: preserving the people's way of life through environmental protection.

Independents are now the largest voting bloc in New Hampshire, making up 37.5 percent of total voters. Registered Democrats account for 26 percent (and Republicans for 36.5 percent). So the Democratic primary race on Tuesday could be determined as much by non-Democrats as by party members.

While Democratic losses in the South have been documented in gruesome detail, far less has been written of the Republican decline elsewhere. Northern New England, for example, used to be the most Republican region in the country. (Quick quiz: Which were the only two states to vote for Franklin Roosevelt's Republican opponent, Alf Landon, in 1936? Answer: Vermont and Maine.) Until 1958, Vermont had never sent a Democrat to Washington. When he angrily left the Republican Party in 2001, Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords had occupied the longest-held Republican seat in the country.

Some may blame the Republicans' Northern decline on an influx of liberal newcomers from outside. But that doesn't explain the defections of people like Sara and Ira Townsend. Sara was born in 1919 in Putney, Vt. — home of Sen. George Aiken, the legendary Republican moderate. Ira was born a year later in Lebanon, N.H.

The Townsends "don't get" the Bush administration. They are shocked by the budget deficits. "How is it that we got so excited about the big debt we had 10 years ago?" Ira asks. "Now, no one cares."

There's no love of taxes in New Hampshire, but even Republicans here regard Washington-style tax-cutting with contempt. Last spring, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist pestered New Hampshire state legislators as they debated plans to raise revenue. Dick Green, the Republican chairman of the state Senate Finance Committee, got into a shouting match with Norquist and told him to go back to Washington.

New Hampshire has been called a Northern outpost of Sunbelt conservatism. In truth, it is no longer reliably Republican, and not particularly conservative.

In the 2000 primary, New Hampshire voters favored reformer John McCain over Bush by a wide margin. Were it not for the Nader vote, Al Gore would have surely won New Hampshire, if only by a hair.

In 1996, New Hampshire elected a Democratic governor, Jeanne Shaheen. The current governor, Craig Benson, is a Republican who has announced plans to openly defy the Bush administration and go to Canada for cheaper prescription drugs. (New Hampshire Republicans in Washington stand well to the left of the president on environmental and health-care matters.)

This sort of mixed-up politics has become common in "battleground" states and communities across the nation. It's not so much that the electorate is evenly divided between Republican and Democratic voters. It's that the voters are divided within themselves — they can't buy either party's package.

Nowhere is this inner chaos more apparent than in New Hampshire. That should make the upcoming primary — and the general election to follow — utterly unpredictable.

Providence Journal columnist Froma Harrop's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is fharrop@projo.com

Copyright 2004, The Providence Journal Co.